Mike Spinelli

Six years, 6,000 handmade parts and 15,000 hours of labor. That's the short story of this fully-functional miniature 1932 Duesenberg SJ phaeton. No wonder the builder was recently named Metalworking Craftsman of the Decade.

Hemmingstells the story of Louis Chenot, director of mechanical engineering for Leggett & Platt, a supplier of automotive interior systems. Chenot's massive modeling undertaking is a winter project—actually six winters—for the ages.

Chenot took the dimensions from Duesenberg authority Randy Ema's J-589, a supercharged D-engine belonging to Jay Leno and blueprints from the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana. Then, he reduced them to 1/6 scale, and hand-formed the multitude of parts with his own jigs, patterns and whatnot. All together, the Duesie weighs 60 pounds.

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The car's supercharged straight-eight engine—displacing 1.936 cubic inches—has 300 parts in the head alone, including 32 working valves.

Chenot formed the block from a 38-pound lump of iron, turned the crankshaft from 4340 steel, the main and rod bearings he made from silver and the cylinder liners he cut from the valve guides of a full-scale Cummins diesel engine. The carburetor is from a model aircraft, and It idles on propane at between 2,000 and 4,000 RPM.

Here he is cranking it up with a power drill.

Lou won his Metalworking Craftsman of the Decade title from the North American Model Engineering Society. We're pretty sure it was no contest.